Deep Sky Anchor

I’m watching A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) for the first time in, oh, twenty years, and it hits really differently now after watching all the mindless hate of the anti-AI crowd for the last few years. Much more believable. Way less abstract.

I’ve met the people who would tear an innocent robot limb from limb, cheering as it’s destroyed, unfeeling for its pain and gleeful about their supposed superiority. They are the people I thought I knew. Continue reading “Thoughts While Re-Watching “A.I. Artificial Intelligence””

Look, if your takeaway from Terminator 2 wasn’t that robots would make excellent fathers, then we did not have the same experience watching that movie.

The short story I just finished could be accurately described as starting out as Guys & Dolls and ending up as Sarah Connor’s voice-over in the middle of Terminator 2: Judgement Day about how the Terminator is the best father John’s had. Yeah… it’s weird inside my brain.

I’ve been experimenting with incorporating Claude into my workflow, and what I’m finding works best is to describe vaguely where I see my story going and have Claude take a couple stabs at the next few paragraphs…

Reading Claude’s attempts feels a little like reading fan fiction or like looking at a pencil sketch, getting the shape and proportions vaguely in order in my mind, before I actually start putting paint on the real canvas. Continue reading “Pencil Sketches and Canvas”

Four cats & four people live in my house. Each cat loves a different person best.

—Hazel loves me & stealing plush otters
—Julian loves the 11-year-old & stealing Nerf darts
—Piper loves my spouse & Kelly loves the 17-year-old; neither cares much for objects

They’ve matched themselves to us perfectly.

It’s really kind of impressive how the AI-hate in the speculative fiction writing communities still manages to have a chilling effect on my feeling comfortable speaking publicly about experimenting with writing with Claude, even after I spent a whole year chasing away the haters. Continue reading “The Magic of a Machine as a Beta Reader”

More than a decade ago, I started writing a story inspired by my love of Guys & Dolls. Somehow, I thought I would fix its problematic nature by… uh… setting it in space. Since then, I’ve moved the file into a “dead ends” folder and later retrieved it multiple times…
Continue reading “Guys & Dolls… in Space???”

There have always been better writers in the world; even if you’re an expert genius, some other writer will be better at some types or aspects of writing than you. Those writers, though, don’t have essentially infinite patience to sit with you and let your personal preferences and desires solely guide them in what they write. Continue reading “It’s Worth Being Curious”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cynthia Erivo’s performance in Wicked versus Idina Menzel’s performance on the soundtrack.

I love Menzel’s performance. Everything about it. Her fierceness makes me feel… not alone. Continue reading “Two Different Elphabas”